Josh Billings Quotes

I hav often heard ov men who had bekum disgusted with the world, and retired into solitude; but i hav never heard ov a kommitty ov our fust citizens waiting on them and asking them tew kum bak.

Nature never makes blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.

When i see a poor, and proud aristokrat, purtiklar about punktillio, he alwus puts me in mind ov a drunken man, trieing tew walk a crack.

I never hav seen a bigot yet but what had a small and apparently braneless hed--bit i hain't seen all the bigots, yu know.

A secret ceases to be a secret if it is once confided—it is like a dollar bill, once broken, it is never a dollar again.

Natur duz awl her big and little jobs without making enny furse; the earth goes around the sun, the moon changes, the eklipses, and the pollywog, silently and taillessly, bekums a frog, but man kant even deliver a small-sized 4th ov July orashun without knocking down a mountain or two, and tareing up three or four primeval forests by the bleeding rutes.

As in a game ov cards, so in the game ov life, we must play what is dealt tew us, and the glory consists, not so mutch in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.

Yung man, don't grind yure scythe all on one side!

I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so.

Tew bring up a child in the wa he should go—travel that wa yourself.

If thare iz enny human being that i thoroughly loath, it iz the one who haz nothing tew boast ov but hiz money--a mere pimp tew hiz welth.

When i cum akrost people who are perfeklty krazy for ventilashun, i say to miself, "that kritter was brought up in a windmill."

Take awl the prophecys that hav cum tew pass, and awl that hav caught on the center, and failed tew cum tew time, and make them up in an average, and yer will find, that buying stock, on the Codfish Bank ov Nufoundland, at 50 per cent, for a rise, iz, in comparison, a good spekulatiff bizziness.

Love is like the measles; we can't have it bad but once, and the later in life we have it the tougher it goes with us.

I don't kno az i want tew bet enny money, and giv odds, on the man, who iz alwus anxious tew pray out loud, every chance he kan git.